Honor Your Father and Mother, Part 1

When God gave the Ten Commandments, which of course are the basic building blocks of our relationship with God and relationship with each other, they're just the foundation. There's a lot more to this than that. But that is the foundation. He gave two commandments that are directly related to the family. Now, I know we've done three sermons on the first, second, and third commandments, and I'm going to move the fourth commandment until later. And the reason why is, I actually want to do two sermons on the fifth commandment. And I'll show you why as we go through this. You know, you think, wow, of all those commandments, why would you give two on that one? Well, I'll explain it as we go along. So, I'll be doing the fourth commandment after the spring holy days. And I want to get these two in, at least close enough to each other that you can relate them. So, we'll do these before the spring holy days. When you think about it, thou shalt not commit adultery protects the sanctity of marriage. That's a remarkable little statement. Once you're married, you stay married. And you can't, you know, there's a holiness to this. But the fourth commandment, honor your, I mean the fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God has given you. This actually proclaims the sanctity of parenthood. There is something holy about being a parent. You are ordained by God, if you will. You know, when we get married, God ordains the marriage. It's a whole union. There's actually a holiness to marriage, or to parenting, because there's a command, honor your parents. So all you kids in the room, get ready because I'm coming after you. Actually, I'm not. I'm not. That's why this has to be put into two parts. There's a number of things we have to really talk about. So, fifteen hundred years after God gave the Ten Commandments, the Apostle Paul mentions this commandment specifically to children and teenagers in the Ephesus Church. Let's go to Ephesians, chapter 6. I say teenagers, in the world that they lived in, once you reached about thirteen, you were an adult. Which means you had to work and function as an adult in society. You had the responsibilities of adulthood.

People grew up faster because they died quicker. They know now that during the time of the Roman Empire, medium age was forty. Now, that meant some people lived on the sixties and seventies and eighties, but the average person didn't. Part of the reason why was children died so young. So they grew up fast. Unfortunately, we don't have to grow up quite as fast today. But Ephesians 6, verse 1, Now, when I give the second part of this, I'll talk about children. What does that mean? But today I'm actually going to talk about what does that mean to us parents or grandparents?

So the commandment literally says, good things will happen to you when you honor your parents. And here you will see that he ties in honor with obedience. When I talk about honor, though, what does that mean? And we'll talk about obedience, too, because obedience is part of that. But they're not exactly the same. Honor means to place someone or look on them as high value. When you honor someone, you look up to them, you have high value to me. And that's why when we tend to think of honor, we tend to think of respect. I look up to you, you have value to me. We do the same thing with things. I mean, how many toys do you have that, if you're a young person, you don't have any value, so you just throw it in the corner, it doesn't mean anything. And then you have something on the shelf that if somebody touches, you're really upset. That has high value to you. This has low value. We're talking about people here, people who you highly value. And the command is that you are to highly value your parents.

Now, parents get very frustrated in trying to teach this to children. They just don't honor me. They just don't respect me. My children don't show me respect. Actually, learning to honor is not a natural trait for you and me. Well, it's natural, but we honor people for the wrong reasons. Learning to honor the way this, the Bible talks about it, especially here, is not necessarily easy.

So, parents struggle with. My 15-year-old will not honor me. My 15-year-old disrespects me. My 8-year-old disrespects me. And they will not honor me. So, there's a frustration. So, now we're going to go in a little different direction.

Because instead of just saying, okay, young people, here's how you honor, let's stop before we go there and say, how do I as a parent teach them to honor? So, we can start saying, you need to honor. Now, let's step back first and say, wait a minute, how do I teach them that? Now, what baby is born with the concept, oh, I have to honor this person? Well, actually, babies tend to really look up to parents because you feed me, you hold me, you change my diaper, right? But, it's not honor. They don't understand what honor is. You're taking care of their needs. So, how do we teach honor? And this may be the most important statement I'm going to make all morning. Children learn how to give honor by witnessing parents who give honor.

Children learn how to give honor by witnessing parents who give honor. So, we're going to talk about five ways that we as parents, grandparents, can do this, too. We can teach children honor. We can teach them honor.

The first one, say, okay, now I'm going to learn how to teach my children honor. Where do I start?

You know, we usually start by saying, you honor me, which we have the right to say that, by the way. Just as you have the right to demand of your mate that they do not commit adultery because you have a whole union. We have the right to say, you honor me because that is a command from God. Because as a parent, you have an ordination from God to have children and to do something with them. And they have a command to honor you. But if you start with the command, you're already in trouble. The first way parents teach children honor is that they honor God. The parents honor God. All honor starts with God. You know what we end up doing? We end up spending our lives trying to honor ourselves. You know, men, we really honor for men is a really big thing. And I've seen men, and I personally, have done many stupid things for my personal honor over the years. The problem is, when you're doing that, you're really not honoring, are you? You're not honoring yourself, you're not honoring others. You're just doing something stupid. Honor is important. But if we're really going to understand honor because you can demand out of a sense of honor, you can demand honor from your children because you need a sense of honor. But you teach them, you teach them the honor themselves. So if we're going to start with teaching how, you know, following that command, because where does that command come from? God. So we have to start with, I must honor God so that they can see what honor is. So all honor really starts with God. It starts with honoring God. And this is how we begin. This is the first step in teaching children how to honor you. Is that you honor God.

This is a hard concept, especially when you're in conflict with your kids, you know, and they're not showing you honor. But we must be honoring God for them to learn honor. Now what that means is, and listen to this, because this is not, you will find very many child or parenting books out there that will start with this. Very few. To honor God means you must make your family God-centric.

You must make your family God-centric. Now what do I mean by that? If you make your family parent-centric, I am going to force my will on my children, you will produce nothing but conflict. If that's all there is to your family, I am the center of my house. Therefore, I'm going to force my will on my children.

Now I'm not saying there are times when you don't force your will on your children. When your two-year-old wants to run out the street, you force your will on your child, right? What I'm saying is, this is an approach. This approach says, and what it is, people will think this through, it's emotional. I demand honor, I demand my will to be done, so the family becomes parent-centric. And the children are treated pretty much as sort of peasants. Now, just as damaging, and maybe even more so, is when we make our families child-centric. Well, the whole purpose of the family is to make them feel good. We don't want their feelings hurt. We don't want bad things to happen to them. So every time the teacher corrects them, we go jump on the teacher, right? Every time something happens that shouldn't happen in their lives, we defend them even when they're wrong. The whole purpose of the family is for them to have high self-esteem. If you're a child-centric family, you will produce children who will not honor you. Why? Because they're selfish. They're the center of the universe. So if the parents are the center of the family, you're going to have real problems with anger. If the children are the center of the family, you're going to have real problems with disrespect. Neither of those will work. And we're now... There used to be... You know, you go back far enough, parent-centric model was the model of the family. And now we've switched to the child-centric model. Well, what's that producing?

So we have to have a God-centric model. If a child should have grown up to say, I must honor my parents, even in conflict, even in disagreements, I must honor my parents, that is to come why? Two reasons. One, it's what I'm supposed to do as part of their character, because that comes from God. And two, it's because of the relationship they have with the parent.

So we have to have a God-centric family in which the honor of God is real important. There's a fascinating story about... Of course, Samuel... I went to Hannah here a couple months ago, and now Samuel ended up being the high priest. But he learned under Eli. Well, God cursed Eli because of a very specific reason. This is very important. Let's go to 1 Samuel 2. And just look at why Eli failed as a high priest to God.

1 Samuel.

He was having trouble with his sons. He said, well, yeah, with his sons.

But here's why his sons failed. His sons were disrespectful to Eli. His sons were disrespectful to God. His sons were incredibly disrespectful to other people. These were men who honored only themselves. They only honored themselves.

Verse 27. Then a man of God came to Eli and said to him, Best says the Lord, That I not clearly reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt at Pharaoh's house. Did I not choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, To offer upon my altar, to burn incense, and to wear an ephod before me? In other words, I chose Aaron. I chose the house of Levi. You're a Levite! You're supposed to be! You've been ordained! You've been chosen by me to do these things. And did I not give to the house of your father all the offerings of the children of Israel made by fire? Why do you kick at my sacrifice, my offering which I have commanded in my dwelling place, And honor your sons more than me to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel my people?

If we build a parent-centric family, we will end up with spiritual problems. If we create a child-centric family, we will end up with spiritual problems. We have to create God-centric families. I've seen people make the mistake of making a church-centric family. The church is our family, right? We all live. The church is central to our lives, but it's not more important than God. In other words, I've seen families say, well, if I could just get my kids to more activities, then there'll be the church. When the question is, the real issue is, how do I help my children and use activities to help my children become connected with God? That's the point! If they're not connected with God, they're not going to stay in the church anyways. It's our connection with God that counts. That He keeps us in the church. He's the one that brings us in. He's the one that keeps us in. So these activities, the things we do, have an end goal. And that is to help young people get connected to God. It is to honor God. So we have to be God-centric. So remember, whatever we honor above God is showing dishonor to God. And we can actually dishonor God in our own families.

There is a type of family that becomes so self-absorbed with its own family, destroying other relationships, that becomes actually very unhappy in there. And that kind of family can produce very socially inept and sometimes violent children.

So we have to say, okay, we have to put God at the center of this. So that's the first step. Now that's a big step, and we can spend the whole rest of the time just talking about that. But you're going to have to do some exploration as parents and grandparents. How do I make sure that we have a God-centric family?

Now the second way that parents teach children honor is by honoring each other, husband to wife and wife to husband. In fact, that example is so important in our children growing up to have happy marriages, and our children growing up and how they develop their families. I look back down, I think of all the mistakes I made as a father, and I think, oh man, if I had that to do over. But my daughter, my oldest daughter, paid me a compliment one time. She didn't mean it that way.

She said, she was really upset as a teenager. She said, I don't know, our life is so boring, Dad. This is like watching the Cosby Show. I said, wow, thank you. She didn't mean it that way. And later, I'll never forget when she had her first baby, and we were at a dance, and I said, oh, Sophia must have been just a couple months old. And I'm out on the dance floor dancing with her, and she's just laughing. And I walked over, and Kelly looked at me and said, this really is like the Cosby Show. But she met it differently than what she did when she was 15. I said, wow, I made some mistakes, but maybe they weren't as bad as I thought here.

They learned by watching how we honor each other, husband and wife. Turn to 1 Peter. You wouldn't read 1 Peter, you think, in a sermon about teaching children to honor parents. But let's go here, because think about this in terms of...1 Peter 3. Think about this in terms of what they're watching, what they're seeing. Children model behavior.

And that's why we can't...we don't have total control over our children, do we? They model the behavior of other people. In fact, it reaches a point in their development that they're around other people more than us. They get in school and so forth, and sometimes the behavior of those people has more effect on them than our behavior. But what we establish, especially in those first few years, will help maintain a relationship with them throughout the school years.

And they're going to model. They're going to watch us. So think of this as husbands and wives as parents, and think of your...a 5-year-old or an 8-year-old or a 16-year-old watching you.

Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands. We don't read this too often. This is something you don't want to hear in our modern world.

That even if some did not obey the word, now that's what's interesting here. The example that Peter is using is, be a good example to your husband who's not in the Word. And I just want to extrapolate this out and say, be a good example to your children who are watching.

Be a good example to your children who are watching.

Likewise, be submissive to your own husbands. Even if some did not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives.

Can our children be won by the conduct of the parents?

So you can move this over and make the same argument. When they observe your chaste conduct, accompany by fear. Now do not let your adornment be nearly outward, arranging the hair wearing gold or putting on fine apparel. He didn't say women should walk around with sackcloth on and never comb your hair. That's not the point. He says, don't let this be your entire focus. Women, you're designed to try to look nice. It's part of your DNA. Yeah! God knew what he was doing. That's who you are. But what Peter is saying is, that can't be your sole focus. That can't be your sole focus. Because he goes on, rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, the former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adored themselves, making some distance with their own husbands. So obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are, if you do good, I'm not afraid with any terror. Now I'm not saying you need to go around calling your husband Lord. The point is, he's making, is that your example to your husband should be that you are honoring God.

So shouldn't your example, then, to your children be that you honor God?

Because that's the point he's making. Right? Because he says it here, precious in the sight of God. And if a woman lives in a marriage with a mate who doesn't believe this way, she struggles with those issues. And her submission to her husband sometimes isn't because she wants to. It's because she's honoring God. In other words, she's not submitting him because she's weak. She's actually submitting to him because she's stronger than he is. Because she's submitting because of God. So it's actually she's stronger.

So we have to look at this in the terms of what God is saying and what Peter is saying here. Think of your example to him. So let's think of our example to our children. Now, verse 7, husbands. This is the first I don't like. I'm glad it's only your first log. Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, holding her up in high esteem, holding her up as high value to you. Our children should know, guys, our grandchildren should know, guys, that she is valuable to you. So valuable, guess what? My relation with her is more important than my relation with you. You mess with this one and you lose. You think, oh, that hurts kids. No, it doesn't. One of the things that children need more than anything, even as teenagers, is a sense of security. If mom and dad aren't honoring each other, they feel insecure. When children feel insecure, the younger they are, the less they are cognitive, the more they're driven by their emotions, right? So the more insecure they are, the more badly they will behave. In fact, they'll do almost anything for attention. Or they'll withdraw. You've got just as bad a problem. But when they see this relationship as unbreakable, they feel secure. And you have a much easier time dealing with their conduct. The more secure a child is in your love and in the relationship between mom and dad, the easier they are to deal with.

Because you don't have to deal with all those other emotions. Now, that's a little harder when they get into the teenage years because now they're dealing with a much wider variety of emotions. The best time in a boy's life is 10 years old. You're oblivious to everything around you, you just have fun, and you haven't figured out girls yet, so you stay away from them. By 15, all you're worried about is, how do I look? How are they going to think about me? You're just worried about all kinds of stuff because it gets much more complicated. So, that's where, if there's a secure relationship between the parents and the young people, we can help them through it. You can't solve it all for them because you remember going through it yourself. But you can help them through it because it's such a difficult time. So, the husbands give honor to the wife as the weaker vessel. That doesn't mean they're emotionally weaker. It doesn't mean they're stupid. It doesn't mean they're, in fact, he's going to make the point that they are not spiritually weaker. But in most cases, we are physically, we could physically manhandle our wives. And think about how dishonorable that feels if you do so. There's nothing that will destroy a woman's security and love for you quicker than physically manhailing her. Because how does she know she can be safe now? How do you know children can be safe if he'll do that to me? And believe me, she's going to protect those children. She's designed to protect those children. You're all designed that way. By God. So he says, you do not manhandle that woman. You honor her. And then he says, why? Being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers be not injured. She is spiritually your equal. And he says, if you don't believe that, God won't listen to your prayers. That's the thing about this that really bothers me. Your prayers will be hindered. I put you in charge, mishandle her, and your issue is with me. That's the problem with being in charge. But we mishandle them. Our issue is with God.

So think of this now in terms of chattering.

Honor her. Honor him.

When we take times in its bed, and we show dishonor to our wives, the kids see that. When you nag him, when you put him down, if they walk in the room and hear you talking to another woman on the phone, and you're just tearing your husband down, and you're dishonoring him, you are sowing the seeds for them to dishonor you. That's what you're doing. Because you're watching all this. Sometimes we have dishonored her from our children because we sow the seeds of dishonor. We did honor God, and we dishonored each other's parents.

And then we reap that eventually.

Now, one thing. Children have to learn somewhere along the way that we're not perfect. Honoring us is not based on perfection. Honoring us is based upon you will have a good life. This is good for you. This will make you happier. That's amazing that in this fifth commandment, there is a benefits statement. On your parents, so you can have a better life.

Because, you know, the natural thing would be, why should I honor my parents? That they don't let me do all this stuff. So he says, let me give you the benefits statement. You have a better life if you do this.

The third way that we teach children to honor God, and I want to explain this a little bit, is we have to honor them.

We have to show them honor. Now, remember, I said you can't create a child-centric family. This doesn't mean that you spend all your time making sure that nothing bad happens to them and they have high self-esteem. I failed the test, that's okay. I didn't study that I failed the test. Oh, that's okay. No, it's not.

No, it's not. Will you go talk to the teacher for me? No. You didn't do your homework. I want to talk to the teacher. You're in trouble. You're grounded. But you're punished me and the teacher hurt my feelings. See, if you're a God-centric family, there's going to be standards that everybody expected to be. Which is, by the way, if you want to honor your children, be a good parent. If you want to honor your children, sometimes say no. When it's time to say no. If you want to honor your children, discipline them when they're supposed to be disciplined. That's honoring them. That's saying, you're of high value to me.

If you want to dishonor your children, let them do whatever they want. Make them miserable. And you're dishonoring your children. If we honor them, we show them that they have value. You need something to me. You never do discipline without explaining it and then making sure that the relationship is reestablished after the discipline.

Always. I had to do this for this reason. Don't say it's going to hurt me more than you because, nah, it's not. It's not.

But the bottom line is, what we have to do is we have to help them understand, I do this because I value. Now, if you're an apparent centric family, guess what you do? You punish them because it's inconvenient for you.

You punish them because they got on your nerves.

You're punishing them for the wrong reasons.

And they know that. But when you're punishing them for standards, and when you say, I understand, I'm not perfect, I've made mistakes too, God punishes me. See, in a God-centric family, you can say, I'm not perfect. You know what's really bad in a parent-centric family? You've got to pretend you're perfect. And they figure out you're not at a pretty young age. But in a God-centric family, you can say, oh no, God expects me to work with you and teach you this because I'm learning it. And I don't even want you to have some of the hard knocks I've had to go through. I value you too much. See, I honor you. So we actually teach them honor by honoring them, by showing them value. By showing them that they mean something to us. Let's go back to Ephesians. We read those first three verses of Ephesians 6. Let's look at verse 4. And this is written specifically to men, although it's an issue we may have too. But it's because fathers, we can do this more than the mothers in this case.

Verse 4. Remember verses 1, 2, and 3. Peter takes... I'm sorry, back to Paul here. Paul takes that fifth commandment and applies it to children. And he says, one way you do this is by obeying them. But notice in this same context now, in this same thought, he goes, fathers and you fathers. So he just spoke to the children. He says, now you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. That very statement is a God-centric family. Train them in the what? Admonition of the Lord.

So our job is to help them honor God, honor us, and we teach them... part of it is by honoring them. When we provoke our children constantly... Now, I'm not saying... I guess what? You do what's right and they're going to get mad at you sometimes. Yes, yeah, they are. They've got human nature. Just like we get mad at God sometimes. So you can't say, okay, my purpose is to make my children never be angry with me. Well, then give up parroting.

But, he says, don't provoke them. You know, sometimes if we're not careful, we're poking them all the time. All they hear is how bad they are and where they fail.

Stop poking them!

Be positive when you can. Find every opportunity you can to be positive, even in correction.

I just loved it when something... my kids would do something and they'd have a bad result. That would mean something that was really hurtful, but they'd have this bad result. Instead of correcting them, I'd say, I could have told you that. They'd look at me and I'd be like, doesn't feel good, does it? Something bad happened. Yeah. See, I don't have to correct them then.

Now, let me tell you how not to do that again.

Yeah, why spank them?

That's a whole story. I didn't. On time, we had a group of teenagers and we were camping up in South Dakota, Custer State Park. Pretty wild, Perry. I mean, there's the mountain lions and bears and stuff. So we told them to stay right around. And I had to go get something at the camp store, so I went with a guy in a truck. We came back and this one parent came up. It was just furious. It seemed the three of the teenage boys had gone into the outhouse. No, that's all they had were outhouses. And decided, for reasons that only made sense at the time, they got the biggest rock that would fit through the hole, dropped it in, and they'd all bent over the hole.

The door flies open. They have come running through, just screaming. They all jump in the lake.

And this parent comes up and says, You want happiness? Yeah, I just heard. I'm trying not to laugh. And they said, aren't you going to punish them?

I said, what in the world could I do to them worse than what they did to themselves?

I said, I'll talk to them. So I walked in, hey guys, they came over in their heads, you know, like this.

What in the world made you do that? I don't know.

Just remember, when it seems like a good idea at the time, sometimes it's not, yes sir. That's all I said. I didn't have to say anything else, you know. And then I just started to laugh and said, that's a hard lesson. But okay, you'll learn a hard lesson. And then they were like relieved because they thought I was going to, you know, do something terrible to them. What could I do worse than what they did?

So what we have to be careful, and let me read this, by the way, this verse from the NIV. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. God-centric family. We teach them honor by honoring them. You know, that's part of what we're supposed to do. You know, one of the hardest things is, as adults, is dealing with the sexual education of our children especially the teenagers. And what we can do is we can get obsessed with that and actually make it appear that the sexual relationship is dishonorable. And the truth is, in marriage, it's honorable. It's only dishonorable outside of marriage.

So we need to teach it as honorable. You know, our first Thessalonians 4. Look what Paul wrote here.

First Thessalonians 4.

It's a little of a thought, but let's look at verse 3 here.

For this is the will of God, so let's go back to honoring God. It's the concept that God knows how this works. And sometimes it's against what we feel. Sometimes what we feel isn't how it works. Like, I know watching this rock go down in this hole is going to be fun, right? It seems like this... what's going to happen? We don't know. I said, did you think through? No?

And I thought, you know, I could have done that at 15.

I probably would have. There was not a girl at the camp that would have done that.

But I would have. That's why I kept laughing at him.

So, just because we feel it doesn't mean it will work. And that's what's so hard when you're a teenager. And we honor them by saying, no, understand. Just because you feel this way doesn't mean it will work. And that's why it says here, in verse 3, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. In other words, your holiness, your goodness. God is doing this for you. That you should abstain from sexual immorality. That each of you should show or know how to possess his own body, his own vessel in sanctification and honor. We teach you to honor your body. It's not impassion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. Learn to honor your own body. This is why we should try to take care of our own bodies. God gave us a body and he says, honor it. So we should try to eat right, try to take care of ourselves. And it has to do with our own sexuality. This isn't a matter of what God's trying to keep us from something good. It's the opposite. This is very, very powerful and can be very, very destructive. So let me show you how it works. And honor yourself. Show high appreciation and value of your own body and your own mind.

So this is the way we should approach this. If we're not careful, like I said, we're almost obsessed with a naked approach to it. Or we simply produce more guilt and insecurity.

I'm just glad I'm through those years. Of course, I have grandkids come up. And a lot of times grandkids will go to the grandparents instead of the parents. So this is going to come. The fourth reason. And this is very difficult. And I can spend a lot of time on this. It's almost another sermon in itself. Parents teach children honor by honoring their own parents. But sometimes that's hard. We can go to Matthew 15 and talk about the Corbin vow, where they actually had a ritual, a religious ritual, that caused people to dishonor their parents.

But it was okay, I'm honoring God. And in that passage, Jesus said, wait a minute, you're breaking the commandment to honor your parents. Oh no, we're honoring God. No. Not in this case.

Because they were using a ritual as a way to actually dishonor their parents. That's very important. I've seen people say, well, my parents don't believe this way, so I don't have to have anything to do with my parents. If they don't believe this way, does not negate honoring your parents.

It doesn't negate it. It does say, honor your parents except the ones who keep Christmas. That'll say that. It says, honor your parents. So that you can have a better life. So we have to show honor.

The difficult part of this is that if you come from a family where you were abused, an abusive family, maybe you were beat, maybe they just yelled at you all the time, maybe you were sexually abused. They say, well, I can't honor them. Well, that's a very difficult and very complicated issue, and I'm not going to try to or pretend to try to go through all that here in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

But I listen to this in terms of your teaching your children honor, and that's what we're talking about here. There is a point that you must let God heal you of your past so that your children can learn honor. In other words, if you harbor nothing but resentment and anger towards something your parents did to you, you will pass that on to your children because you'll model that in some way. Now, that doesn't mean what they did was right. It doesn't mean, by the way, you have to go necessarily have a good relationship with them.

If you were abused as a child, and I've had to counsel many, especially women, a few men, especially women who were sexually abused as children, and I say, I wish to reestablish a relationship with my father or my brother or whatever, but I can't because after 40 years they still say, I didn't do that or it was your fault. And I say, well, you can't establish a relationship with them. All you can do is forgive them. There's a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Two totally different things. Forgiveness is I give up all this anger and hate. I just give it up.

Because I said, if you give that up, if they walked into your house tomorrow and said, I wish to ask for your forgiveness, I was wrong, what would you do? I'd break down crying. Yeah, see? Because you want to give the forgiveness. If you say, I'd say, oh, no, I want you to go to jail. I want to beat you. I went, I went, you know, well, wait a minute. Now you got a real problem. You can't, the relationship can never be established. But if we say, okay, I'm willing to give this up, you still carry the hurt. You can't get away from all that hurt. But you can give up the hatred or the need, the punishment.

Or that you can't give up the anger, even though you were abused. You can't have a relationship unless they repent. Now, you see, where do you get that from? God forgave me while I was yet a sinner. But He didn't enter into a personal relationship with me, an in-depth personal relationship to our repentance. That's how I know that. Same thing. God forgave me before I repented. But He wouldn't let me have come into a relationship, you know, on a deep level, until I repented.

So that's a whole other subject. We'll cover that sometime. But what it shows is, you have to give that up, even if you can't have a relationship. Or you know what you'll do? You'll spend all your time telling your kids why Grandpa is a pervert. Now, you may not want your kids around Him. Right? I'm talking some pretty intimate things here. But let's face it, this is the reality of the world we live in. This is the reality of the world we live in.

So you can do that. I don't think some little kid's going to say, Mommy, that's a pervert. So I should have used a different word. Sorry. It's amazing parents will come up and say, You might be a kid asking me about this. So you try to think about how you say things. Or you can say, Your Grandpa has a very serious problem. He does not honor God. But you don't show hatred. That will strengthen the relationship of honor the child has for you. And that's where you get sometimes we have to think of them. And that's so hard when you've been abused.

Oh, my gosh. I can remember my mom and dad, people, saying they beat me. And that's hard when you don't want your kids to be exposed to that. But you don't want to say, You need to hate your grandparents like I do.

Okay, I've got to give up the hatred because they will fear, they will mimic my behavior. It's a very difficult thing. If you don't, you will harbor this anger and resentment, and you will live that out in other ways. I want to read something to you that just is a perfect example of this. This is from a book called The Gift of Honor by Gary Smalley. He's a psychologist who looked at the Bible and went through different Biblical teachings about parenting.

It's a very fascinating book. This is an example he uses. Of course, he would have to change the name. When you use these examples, sometimes you change the name or change the... I'll do that sometimes. I'll give an example of something in an article in The Good News.

We change the names or we change the instances so there's no way anybody could know. We'll say, I've dealt with a situation like this. That's because ethically you have to do that. You just can't plaster. Unless someone gives you permission. We then actually give us permission to use their names in an exact example. But usually, this may be a composite or it may be an exact person that they change the name.

Dada's father was an alcoholic and never financially supported the family. Dada's mother had to work full-time and Dada could never have friends over because of fear of what her father might do. Her first marriage ended after two years of fighting, criticism, and trying to deal with her husband's alcohol problem. Interesting. We tend to marry people like what we grew up with. Her second marriage was on the rocks when she finally sought help. The problem was that Dada's hatred for her father was causing her to relive her anger and resentment and all of her other relationships.

Here's what Dada told the counselor. Deep down inside all my life, I have thought that men were nothing but sleigh's balls. I couldn't even enjoy my husband holding me because he reminded me of my father. I even resented the fact that God gave me two boys and a girl. Now, how do you think she's treating those boys? How do you think she's treating the girl? Where do you think those three kids are going to end up?

And why? Because Dada wanted to be a bad mother or was a rotten person? No, because she could not deal with what her alcoholic father had done. At some point, we have to let God heal us of this or we perpetrate it back generations. She said, I want to be close to my husband and my children, and I want to be close to God. But I know that because I view them as men, I really don't trust them.

I want you to notice I don't even trust God because he appears in the male form. Because this came as a man I can't trust Jesus. Now, fortunately, they were able to help her through that. But it doesn't take... I picked this example because any one of us, if we heard that, would say, Oh, she loves those children desperately, but what are they learning? You would know that her behavior towards them would be producing scars in them. She doesn't want to do that. Unless she allows to be healed, what's happened to her...

So, at some point, she has to understand that she is to honor God. She doesn't honor the person of her father, but she can't dishonor his position to the kids. Or they'll grow up with the wrong viewpoint of manhood and fatherhood. Now, she probably would let her kids go visit her dad, and there's probably good reasons why she didn't. But this is what's so hard about coming from abuse is what we don't realize is we model that pain so that our children mimic the pain.

We don't do it on purpose. So that's a whole other subject, but I just wanted to touch on that. Because that's a real problem. We all are damaged people. Even the best parent damages their children a little bit. Before you young people say, Oh, wow, see, my kids damaged me.

You'll damage your kids some, too. Because we're all damaged. But we have to learn to be healed by God so that we help them along instead of simply imprinting upon them our own pain. The fifth point is, parents teach children honor by showing basic respect to other human beings. I learned honor because I watched my dad honor older people.

I still am having trouble calling Mr. Keller's friend. Because he's older than me. And he lets me know it from time to time. I'm older than you. Fusy is telling me, I don't have to worry about that anymore. I'll call him and say, I'm going to make a decision about this. What's your input? I don't have to worry about that anymore. I'm an old man. I gotta be a little bit Mars CB 1420.

No matter what your age is, there's somebody older than you you just show them honor. And when your children are growing up, how we honor the people older than us is very important.

So, we teach them, honor, every time you honor somebody. Why are you honoring them? Why do you say that? Why do you do that? It's been very difficult in my lifetime, but I have called every President of the United States, Mr. President. Not because I honored the man, but because I honored the position. And if I do not honor the position, my children will not honor anyone of position.

We have to show honor to others. And in doing that, that basic respect, you open the door for people. A stranger. You're showing value. It's a stranger. They're a human being made in the image of God. You don't ask them, I'm sorry, have you committed adultery this week? Because you have. I won't open the door for you.

Basic respect. The more we show basic respect, the more they will. The more we thank people. It's interesting, in 1st Timothy, Paul tells people to honor your employer. I worked for some employers back before I came into the church that weren't worthy of honor. But I honored them anyways. And what was the benefit of that? I kept a job. I had food on the table. Right? You show honor. So we have five basic concepts for parents. Broad concepts. There was a lot of material that we could have covered here. It covered quite a bit in an hour. But let's just briefly, I'll state them again. Parents teach children honor by honoring God. And that's the first and most important step. Parents teach children honor by honoring each other. They teach as husband or wife.

There were three. Parents teach children honor by honoring their children. By showing honor to them, they have value. Parents teach children honor by honoring their own parents. Even if their parent may not deserve honor, they at least honor them by not tearing them down and passing on the anger to their children. And their parents teach honor by honoring other human beings. By showing basic respect. When we do these things as parents, as grandparents, just as adults, because I tell you what, the children are watching all of us. They watch every one of us. When we do these things, we honor our common parent. You and I have a common parent. God the Father. All of us are to honor our common parent, whose family we are. We honor the family of God. And we honor our brother, Jesus Christ.

And when we live lives honoring God our Father and honoring Jesus Christ, we will reap something.

Because remember, to reap the fruit of honor, even in your own children, you must first sow the seeds of honor.